Stars aligned for Williams coronation at U.S. Open

Petra Kvitova, one of the latest high seeds to fall at the U.S. Open on Wednesday afternoon - as though the draw was being deliberately cleared for a Serena Williams coronation - was asked after she lost if she would be surprised if Serena did not win the thing.

Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic, above, lost to Italy's Flavia Pennetta in a U.S. Open quarter-final on Wednesday in New York. Pennetta took the match in three sets.David Goldman, The Associated Press / National Post

Petra Kvitova, one of the latest high seeds to fall at the U.S. Open on Wednesday afternoon – as though the draw was being deliberately cleared for a Serena Williams coronation – was asked after she lost if she would be surprised if Serena did not win the thing.

Kvitova, the tall Czech who steamrollered Canadian Eugenie Bouchard 6-3 and 6-0 in the 2014 Wimbledon final, did not hesitate: “Yes,” she said with a smile.

It is hard to fault her logic.

Williams, who seemed a little spent on Tuesday night after beating her sister, Venus, whom she considers her toughest opponent, is unlikely to be terribly daunted by anyone who lies ahead. First up will be Roberta Vinci, a 32-year-old Italian who will make her first appearance in a Grand Slam semifinal.

“Of course I think I’m at the end of my career, so my semifinal, my first semifinal, it’s incredible,” Vinci said after her 6-3, 5-7 and 6-4 quarter-final win over Kristina Mladenovic on Tuesday. “I did not expect one semifinal at the U.S. Open, so I’m really happy.”

It was not the talk of someone who feels they have unfinished business. Asked if she had discovered something in her game that had allowed her to suddenly raise her level, Vinci noted that she had played better recently, but she also said she was lucky with her draw. Carla Suarez Navarro lost ahead of her, as did Jelena Jankovic. Bouchard, her fourth-round opponent, withdrew after suffering a concussion resulting from a fall on Friday night.

“Maybe this is my tournament,” Vinci said.

It feels that way for Williams, for similar reasons. The draw opened up for her before the tournament even began, with No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova pulling out with an injury. Sharapova hasn’t beaten Serena since the last Bush presidency – his first term, even – but she remains the most accomplished non-Williams in the women’s draw.

Once play began, the top seeds started dropping at an alarming rate. Only Kvitova, No. 2 Simona Halep, and Serena herself were among the top 10 players who survived the opening two days of play.

Garbine Muguruza, the Wimbledon finalist? Gone. Lucie Safarova and Timea Bacsinszky, both of whom pushed Serena to three sets in the final rounds of the French Open? Gone and gone. It is little wonder that Serena appeared so relieved after winning the third set against her sister on Tuesday night: Sure, there was the emotional toll of it all, but there might well have been the realization that most of the tough work of the Grand Slam chase was over.

Serena is unbeaten in four matches against Vinci. She is 7-0 against Italy’s Flavia Pennetta, one of the semifinalists on the other side of the draw. And she is 6-1 against Halep, the other one. As Halep, the tiny Romanian, and Victoria Azarenka, who fought Serena to three sets at Wimbledon, slugged it out in a rain-delayed threesetter at Ashe Stadium on Wednesday, it was clear that the winner would be the player most likely to give Williams a fright, if anyone can at this point.

The big mystery remains just how much the pursuit of the calendar Grand Slam has itself been a drain on Serena. She insists that the pressure has not bothered her at all, which is a line she has deployed most of the summer. Even at Wimbledon, she wouldn’t discuss the Slam, saying it was just something the media cared about. (Afterward, she admitted that she very much wanted the win in London so she would hold all four Slam trophies at the same time, for the second time, but she continued to be not particularly fussed by the meaning of winning all four in a single year.)

Before she beat Venus, she said this of the Grand Slam chase: “I don’t really feel like if I win this tournament it’s going to make or break my career. So, you know, I look at it that way.”

She has a point. This is someone who was hospitalized four years ago with a blood clot in her lungs, who at times appeared well into the decline phase of her career and who, at 33, has dominated women’s tennis in a manner not seen since she did it 12 years ago. She spends her off days hanging out with Drake and Kim Kardashian, and going up on stage with Taylor Swift. (Admittedly, everyone seems to be doing the last one.) In that same news conference before the Venus match, Serena was asked if she had ever met Barack Obama’s daughters. “Yeah,” she responded, casually. She had met them a few times over the years. Nice girls, she said. She sounded a little confused by the question. Like, of course she had met the Obamas.

It is a quite a life she leads, and a calendar slam, one suspects, wouldn’t much change it. But she is two wins away now. Only Serena knows how much she wants it.

Kvitova, in her accented English, put it this way: “I think that if she gonna be in the final, I think she gonna put everything what she has inside, and she gonna win it.”

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